


Deep in December

by regalmilk



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Canon, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 17:59:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14959374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regalmilk/pseuds/regalmilk
Summary: (Steve finds Tony after the battle with Thanos. Tony wants, does not want, to be found.)Steve Rogers stands there. Closing the door behind him and not registering anything in the room. His eyes are red, just like Tony’s, and he too knows the last word in the worst Great American Novel. But Tony doesn’t know that. Tony knows only a road on a screen in a bunker. And he sits up, his spine like concrete and the rest of his bones like fire.





	Deep in December

            _I'm glad you're back at the compound. I don't like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself._

            Tony sits on the stairs inside the Sanctum Sanctorum, a tumbler of awful throat-stripping scotch beside him. It has been eight months since. _Since._ It’s like the last word of some Great American Novel. It sticks to him, in his bones, on his teeth (like the scotch), and there is nothing that comes after it. Whenever he tries to finish the thought, bits of Steve’s letter carry it away, like an errant flood. He has been staying in Strange’s townhouse _since_. Since he returned. He hasn’t seen anyone. Bruce called him once, tentatively relating a theory of Pym’s that he believed could be crucial, but when Tony had responded with only silence to optimistic explanations of subatomic particle behavior under exceptional conditions and ‘fractal realities’, the physicist knew Tony wasn’t ready to help. At first, he talked to Pepper over the phone. But he couldn’t face her. And sometimes, most times, he could barely speak to her. After five torturous months, she finally stopped calling. She knows he’s alive, and for now that’s all he can give her.

            _We all need a family._

            “Is that right, Rogers? Well. Your best friend killed mine.” In his head, Tony laughs. In reality, it’s a soft wheeze that could almost be mistaken for a death rattle. And he says it out loud, to the stale air, to the cold spots on the floor where Strange and Bruce had once stood, telling him of space-sent atrocities. “What else you got?”

            His eyes are always bloodshot, but he hasn’t cried in months. He has spent so long in grief, in a haze of ennui, that the anger makes him feel almost alive. Almost. He can’t tell that it’s unwarranted. And he wouldn’t care even if he could. He feels the regression in his body like the wrinkles that nest in the corners of his eyes and on the hills of his knuckles. He feels himself going back. Back to when he first met Steve on the Helicarrier. Back to the bunker in Siberia. Back to the moment he stared into that small bright screen and watched Steve’s best friend murder his parents. Watched Steve lie to him. Watched Steve make a choice. A choice that upended Tony’s entire world in the second it was uttered, and every second afterward.

            And in time, Tony finds a way for every single occurrence, every _mistake_ , from New York to Titan to be the fault of Steve Rogers. It’s the way he needs it to be. And every night for the next three months, he falls asleep to the sound of decades-old video footage, and wakes up to the exquisitely painful knowledge that he hadn’t stopped breathing in his sleep.

            Sometimes he thinks of the kid. _The kid_. He has to be the kid. Tony has buried the name ‘Peter Parker’ so deep into his psyche that he no longer even recognizes it. Sometimes, when he dreams of that quiet road, the _accident_ , it’s the kid in the car instead. Bucky who pulls him out. Bucky who strangles him. Sometimes the kid cries out Tony’s name. Sometimes he just cries. Eventually it isn’t a dream to Tony anymore.

_I didn’t know it was him._

            And then one day, if Tony even still knows what a day is, there’s a sound. He lies at the bottom of the stairs, blanketed by an over-worried sunbeam, when he hears it. He hasn’t told anyone where he is, so the idea that it’s really a knock on the front door is nothing short of impossible.

            But he can tell by the knock itself. By its shyness, by its shame, by its faintly proud echo. He knows who stands on the other side of that threshold. And he swears to every god he believes in and every one that he doesn’t that he will have to buy some better scotch. Because his throat is so dry he can’t say ‘come in’ or the slightly wittier (in his mind) ‘who is it?’ even if he wanted to. And he doesn’t.

            The sunbeam moves over his hip, toward the door, and Tony points at it. “Don’t you dare answer that.”

            But it doesn’t have to, because of course the ghost has a key. He has a key that Bruce no doubt gave to him. And then the door is creaking and _betraying_ Tony, just like the man opening it, and Steve Rogers stands there. Closing it behind him and not registering anything in the room. His eyes are red, just like Tony’s, and he too knows the last word in the worst Great American Novel. But Tony doesn’t know that. Tony knows only a road on a screen in a bunker. And he sits up, his spine like concrete and the rest of his bones like fire.

            “Get out.” The first thing Tony says is not scathing and it’s not clever, and it’s not him. But he feels the nanotech dappling down over his elbows and he knows he will kill Steve if he doesn’t.

            Steve says nothing. But he shakes his head. And Tony can see his eyes. Red, white, and blue. He’s so frayed that the joke is absolutely hysterical to him, and he feels the nanotech melting away while a single half-broken guffaw escapes his lungs and settles into the dead air of the empty townhouse.

            Steve still doesn’t say anything. He moves closer to Tony, and to Tony it feels like another eight months before he crouches down beside him. Puts a hand on his arm. And for Tony’s part, the nanotech glove on his right hand is now fully formed and loaded, aimed at Rogers’ heart. The glove hums softly, murderously, but Steve takes Tony’s hand in both of his and does something that is not him. And yet somehow more like him than anything he has ever done. He leans in (his breath does not smell like scotch). He leans in and takes Tony’s bottom lip between his teeth. And he bites down. Hard. He bites until Tony’s lip is bleeding into his mouth. Then he stops.

            And when he looks up at Tony, Tony sees he’s remembered how to cry, and isn’t that just so noble? Tony’s eyes are a void and his tongue is acid and the blood on his lower lip is burning. “Is that it? Huh? Is that what you needed? ‘Hey guys, Rogers found a Band-Aid, he’s all ready to take the field again. Just in time for the big Homecoming game. Thank _Christ_.’”

            Steve shuts his eyes tightly and his teeth are trembling.

            “Is it my turn now, coach?” Tony doesn’t wait for an answer.

            He slams his forehead into the bridge of Steve’s nose and tackles him to the floor. Steve puts up no fight. But Tony feels more alive than he has ever _since_ , and his titanium glove is stained with Rogers’ blood after he punches him once. Twice. Three times. He loses count. But the scotch thickens in his blood and slows him down. And Steve pushes him off, too gently, his nose and jaw bleeding. And he holds Tony there like a lifeline. Fingers digging into his ribs.

            “He killed them. He killed my parents,” Tony looks at Steve. His voice is full of conviction. His face has none of it. “He killed the kid. He killed _my_ —”

            There are still no tears, but _since_ blocks out his mind and dams up his mouth.

            Steve doesn’t need to ask. It’s wild insane rambling, but Steve knows exactly what it means. Where it came from. What it is—Tony’s new armor—more dangerous than any nanotech. And he moves his hands to Tony’s neck and entangles the two of them together as if the world is ending all over again. And he weeps. The spirit of Captain America is nowhere to be found in him. After _since_ , the shield became too heavy. So he stripped everything else away along with it.

            “Is he gone?” Tony knows what happened. He knows Bucky is gone. Barely cares. But he _does_. And more than that, he wants to hear Steve say it.

            “Yes.”

            And it makes Tony feel like the most vindicated monster to hear that one word. But he can’t help it. And Steve would never blame him for it. The nanoparticles recede and he digs his nails into Steve’s scalp and lets his lip bleed into the other man’s shoulder.

            “Tony.” Steve pulls back to look at him. He just wants to say his name. He doesn’t know why, but he needs it. Needs to feel and hear the pull of those exact syllables. And he knows what he’s inviting in return, but he needs that too.

            “Rogers?”

            “No.” His heart roars in his chest. The silence is deafening.

            The redness in Tony’s eyes. The wrinkles and shadows around them. The quiver in his thin lips. The heat in his fingertips. Steve needs to memorize all of it. Because then Tony looks directly at him. And his dark eyes are tired, but so young. Wounded and lost. And he lives through a long-recurring nightmare as Tony says it.

            “Steve?”

            He inhales a cry as he crushes his lips against Tony’s. It’s messy and bruising, with too many teeth and too many tears. ‘If it had been you’ pours into Tony’s mouth. Tony barely hears it. But he feels it. He kisses Steve’s swollen bleeding jaw. “It _was_ me. It was you too. It was every single one of us.”

            Steve is still brushing the side of his face against Tony’s. Feeling the pulse in his neck.

            “Hey,” Tony says to him, and Steve looks up. His eyes are glassy. Wet and red. “I’m not going anywhere. So if you’re here, you know, _recruiting_ , I’m not interested.”

            “You know that’s not why I’m here.” Steve’s voice breaks like he’s run out of air.

            Tony knows that one day he’ll let Steve recruit him. Rejoin—restart—the fight. They still have to come back. Every one of them. He still has to bring Thanos to his knees. He still has to tell the kid everything is alright, and mean it. Tell the kid he loves him, that he’s proud of him, and ‘from now on, when I tell you to sit this one out, you do it.’ Knowing it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. The kid will know it too. ‘Understand? Look at me and tell me you understand.’ The kid won’t mean it when he says he does. The kid will probably just prattle on about how it was ‘kinda like being frozen in carbonite’, and Tony will roll his eyes and hope to god he never has to actually miss those pop culture references again.

            He doesn’t know how he’ll handle Bucky. He doesn’t have to. Because it’s not time for that. It’s not time for any of it. Tony can barely pick himself off the floor some days. He isn’t ready. Not yet.

            “I know it’s not.” Tony’s eyes have slipped to some far corner of the room. “But I don’t what it _is_ , either.”

            Then Tony feels a pressure on his chest and Steve is pushing him back, down to the floor. The ex-soldier kneels over him and runs his hands through Tony’s hair. Steve closes his eyes because _since_ comes back to him. And Tony sees it, in the soft twitches in his face. He reaches up to lace his own hands through Steve’s hair and pulls him down against him.

            They stay like this for minutes, hours. Maybe years. Tony hasn’t known the meaning of time _since_. And it’s only when Steve’s forehead is wet against his cheek that Tony realizes he’s been crying. Steve is humming something into his throat. At first Tony doesn’t recognize it. But then he does. It’s the song his mother played on the piano the day she died.

            And then Tony understands. He can see it clearly in his mind: Steve alone in a Wakandan facility, in the middle of the night, reliving Tony’s augmented reality from videos taken at the MIT presentation. Watching the tapes of Bucky’s mission, December 16th, 1991, over and over again. Waiting for Tony to call. Knowing that he wouldn’t.

            Tony feels a tightness in his lungs, like they’re being squeezed. He doesn’t have the energy or the wakefulness to hate Bucky in that moment. He’s also nowhere near forgiveness. But he sees the ghost Steve has become, sees microcosms of how much he’s suffered in every muscle spasm. His hands card absently through blonde hair, his nails dragging over soft skin.

            “I made you a promise.” Steve stops humming.

            “Don’t stop,” Tony says. It feels like begging. And it is.

            “No?”

            “This is doing more for me than 611 million dollars ever did.”

            “Tony.” Steve almost smiles. But it’s not quite there. It can’t be. The force of it would break him in half.

            Tony has almost forgotten what that looks like. He’s definitely forgotten how it feels. He leans up to kiss Steve’s conflicted mouth. It’s caked over with blood from his nose, and Tony can taste it. It tastes like metal, like the silo. “Ste—”

            Steve looks down at him. Flinches.

            “Sorry. Can—?” Tony tries to ask. “Are you—? Can I say it?”

            “Yeah.”

            He says it.

            Steve starts humming again. Into Tony’s mouth. Into his neck, his collar bone. And down. It doesn’t unbreak the world, but for a few moments, it makes Tony forget the terrible scotch. The stale air. The cold spots on the floor.

            That night he dreams of December 16th, 1991. His mother is sitting at the piano, and Steve sits beside her. He seems younger, but Tony isn’t sure why. He’s playing the song. That same song. His fingers are shy and faintly proud over the keys. He misses a note, but Tony’s mother beams and encourages him to keep playing. Steve looks up, right at Tony, and smiles. It doesn’t break him in half. There is no last word in the last sentence.

            There is no _since_.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been five years since I last posted here, and I'm a little embarrassed. It's also been five years since I've written any fan fiction, but I needed to write this. The idea of Tony isolating himself in Strange's townhouse haunted me, and I needed to reconcile the nuances and the immense conflict in any kind of reunion between Tony and Steve after the events of Civil War, and especially after Infinity War. Comments and feedback are always deeply appreciated.
> 
> tumblr: @ [regalmilk](http://regalmilk.tumblr.com)


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